Prague’s Franz Kafka Airport Named World’s Most Alienating Airport
Haven’t blogged in a while, so going to shake the rust out of the engine with a little dark humor (side note: when I joined Salon back in the day, I named our first server “kafka”).
To those of you on the Q train this morning, that was me staring at my iPhone and cracking up. I have newfound respect and admiration for Bobbie Battista.
Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport
The Etsy API
In work-related news, I wrote today about the Etsy API we’ve been working on over on Etsy’s blog, the Storque:
http://www.etsy.com/storque/etsy-news/tech-updates-handmade-code-etsys-beta-api-3055/
We’re letting a select group of developers kick the tires in an invite-only beta. If you’re interested in participating, email developer@etsy.com (I’ll see the email there). We’ll have more to say as we get closer to a general release, so stay tuned.
I love this stuff!
We are hiring at Etsy - come join us!
I’m hiring a few key positions on the engineering team at Etsy. See the links below for more details, but before you jump to read them, I wanted to say a little more about the type of person I’m looking 
for. Of course, I want people who write great code and get things done, but more than anything else, I want to hire people who care about the buyers and sellers that make Etsy what it is.
These are jobs that matter. Each of these positions is a dream job (I know mine is!) You will be building new features for and maintaining a marketplace that creative people around the world depend on to make a living. You will be helping enable and surface beautiful stories like the stories of Robin and Kathy Tucker of woodmosaics. If you read their profile, you’ll learn about how Robin developed his style and approach to woodworking, and what tools he uses, including the foot-powered table saw he made with his brother. The profile ends with this:
I know of no better way to make wood stand out and be truly beautiful.
For a lot of people, this is what dreams are made of, they dream of buying it and I dream of selling it.
Dreams do come true!
How many places can you work where your community says you make dreams come true?
Despite some of the gloom-and-doom in the larger economy, Etsy continues to grow. When I’m talking to people about Etsy as a business, I always ask, “Want to guess what the biggest three days in the history of Etsy were?” Usually, the person thinks for a bit and guesses “the day after Thanksgiving last year” and a few other random days. If I ever ask you that question, here’s a hint. Lately, the answer is nearly always the same: the three biggest days in history at Etsy were yesterday, the day before that, and the day before that. You can read some of the numbers yourself in the monthly updates on our blog. The growth of Etsy is a testament to the continued passion and dedication of the community that you would be working hard to support.
Here are the positions we’re hiring (all are based in Brooklyn):
If any of these sound like a dream role for you, and you find Etsy as inspiring as I do (just do a search for “love etsy“), please email me with your resume and tell me why you’re the perfect person to join the engineering team at Etsy (chad -at- etsy dot com).
This blog is NOT dead
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to let you know that this blog is NOT dead. I simply have too many interesting things going on to take the time to record them here (and apologies to those of you who are awaiting my email replies).
Brooklyn is awesome and Etsy is awesome. More soon.
Your pal,
Chad
A quick report from the trenches at Etsy
“Busy” does not adequately describe my first two weeks living in Brooklyn and working at Etsy.
To give you a glimpse into what I’ve been doing and dealing with, check out my first post on Etsy’s blog, the Storque and the resulting forum thread on Etsy’s forums.
I’ve had to jump in head first and there are plenty of challenges, but I’m loving it. Expect light posting here while I focus on the work at hand.
Going paperless: one year later
As I’ve been packing for my move, one thing that I haven’t been packing is papers. About a year ago, I posted about going paperless after I ordered a Fujitsu ScanSnap, the amazing little document scanner. I haven’t discussed the outcome of my paperless quest since then, but here’s the verdict (and I’m typing in all caps for the first time on my blog because this is just how emphatically I feel about it): BUY A SCANSNAP AND GO PAPERLESS NOW. THE IPHONE HAS NOTHING ON THE SCANSNAP. IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
The utter awesomeness of having everything available digitially didn’t truly hit me until I started packing for the move. I have one single thin folder of papers that can’t be scanned for one reason or another (e.g. a certified birth certificate that has embossed). Everything else fits on a thumb drive: receipts and tax materials for the past seven years, copies of loan papers, business cards, user manuals for various products I own that aren’t available online. . . . you name it.
Once I got these “official” papers all scanned, I started scanning various mementos of sentimental value that I didn’t want to throw away: old clippings from college, concert and sports tickets, the original copy of my valedictory speech at my high school graduation, bad poetry and song lyrics over the years, etc. These are things I didn’t want to throw away completely, but don’t deserve box space. The same goes for things like paper take-out menus for favorite restaurants. With experiences like Cover Flow in OS X, I even have the same experience of flipping through a shoebox of mementos or a stack of take-out menus.
So — in case I wasn’t clear, you should get a ScanSnap. That’s all I’m saying.
Want to buy my Subaru? (2005 Outback Ltd XT Turbo)
(Note: SOLD!! I ended up selling the car via Craigslist, so please don’t inquire. When someone showed up with good money 36 hours before the auction ended, I didn’t have the stomach to see if I could make a few hundred extra bucks. I cancelled my eBay auction and ate the listing fee. Still, it was pretty exciting watching the process.)
Since I won’t be needing a car in New York, I’m selling my Subaru. As Subarus go, this is a top-end model — all-leather interior, giant moon roof, all weather package (heated seats/mirrors), dual climate control for AC/heat, bike rack, etc. It’s a perfect car if you have kids, like to go skiing or snowboarding at Tahoe, mountain-biking, or just need to run errands around town. It’s in really great shape and I wouldn’t consider selling it if I wasn’t moving to a place where I don’t need a car.
I decided to give eBay a try out of curiosity more than anything else. If you’re interested, email me for more info (chad at the domain of this blog) and/or go bid on eBay — here is the listing and here are some photos:
Best broadband ISP in NYC (Brooklyn)?
I’m getting down to brass tacks on my move to Brooklyn (just ordered the gas and electric hookup this morning) and I’m ready to set up my broadband account. For the past several years, I have been a happy customer of Speakeasy’s OneLink Select Plus service. It’s more expensive than the Comcasts and Time Warners of the world, but I’ve never had a single problem in four years as a customer, which is remarkable. Here’s what I get:
- 6mbps down / 768 kbps up
- 4 static IPs
- great customer service (very rarely used, but when I call, the person on the other end of the line is smart and empowered)
So, I could re-up with Speakeasy in NY (which I’m leaning towards, but don’t know if their quality is better/worse out there), or I could consider other options. The high-speed Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-Verse services are not available in my area. Any thoughts?
Etsy is looking for a VP of Product
Fred Wilson posted today about Etsy looking for a VP of Product (description here) and described why he believes in Etsy:
There are some companies that are just different, special, and doing something important. Etsy sort of defines that kind of company to me. They are trying to make it possible for creative people to make a living off of the things they make. And in the process, they have built a market where you can find amazing one of kind items that make great gifts or things you can wear with a smile on your face.
When companies say they are “special” and “different,” sometimes they just mean they have a ping-pong table and they let you bring your dog to work. Etsy truly is special and different in a way that one very rarely sees (just search for “etsy addictive” or “etsy love” to see for yourself). I just spent several days in New York, mostly looking for a place to live and working out logistics for my impending move (I officially begin on 9/2), but also spending time with members of the Etsy team. Etsy is unmistakably an Internet company, but one that is connected to basic forms of human expression and social interaction that go back to the beginnings of human economies.
This is an incredibly unique opportunity and someone with whom I would be working very closely. If the people you’ve worked with would describe you as the best product manager they’ve ever seen, send your resume to work@etsy.com.
If you’re reading this and you’re thinking, “Etsy and the role sound amazing, but I love the Bay Area,” (or LA or Seattle or wherever you live) drop me a line (chad @ the domain of this blog). I was in your shoes not that many weeks ago. Moving to NY (hell, even to another house within the Bay Area!) seemed almost absurd. I had just begun some major renovations on my house in anticipation of establishing even deeper roots in the Bay Area. I had a great gig at Yahoo! and the phone was ringing off the hook with recruiting calls from interesting companies all over SF and Silicon Valley. My wife and I felt very established in the area after 10+ years, with a great group of friends and we enjoyed regularly running into people we knew walking around SF. On a purely mundane level, I had even ordered something fairly large (i.e. the kind of thing you wouldn’t move cross-country) online that would be delivered in three weeks just days before I visited Etsy. By the time that package arrived, I had already announced my decision. I was that inspired by Etsy, and am even moreso after this recent visit.
Fire Eagle launches
Fire Eagle launched today. My favorite and most succinct quote in the extensive coverage about Fire Eagle was on VentureBeat from Mike Malone 
(developer at Pownce, one of the launch partners): “Location is hard, Fire Eagle is easy.” Very simply, Fire Eagle makes it simple for developers to build a wide array of location-aware applications and services without dealing with the hard parts.
The developer side is only half the story, though. For end users, Fire Eagle delivers on privacy. When Fire Eagle first went into beta back in early March, Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb really nailed the importance of Fire Eagle’s focus on end user privacy in combination with the developer platform:
Yahoo! put privacy right out front. Many people want their data to be portable from service to service and many people want that to include their location data from mobile or other interfaces. I personally don’t want my location broadcast automatically, at all, to anyone thank you very much. Fire Eagle has privacy and user control of data written all over it.
Users have the option to hide themselves with a single click, they can click to purge all their data from the Fire Eagle databases, the service even lets you select how often you’d like to receive an email reminding you that it is tracking your location as asking you to confirm that you want tracking to continue. By default you’re emailed once a month for consent to be reconfirmed! Hello trust building measures! It’s almost enough to make me interested in exposing my location, selectively.
. . . .
Standards based platform plus strong privacy equals the best scenario I can imagine for a location tracking service.
Indeed. Check out the Application Gallery to see what kinds of applications are being built around Fire Eagle. I’m sure the number will be growing quickly in the coming weeks and months, and I’ll be watching.
In any case, a huge congrats to the Fire Eagle team is in order — nice work!